


the whole world is watching (as you fall)

by lester_sheehan



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6309214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lester_sheehan/pseuds/lester_sheehan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina learns what it’s like to lose everything at once, to watch your whole world crash and burn and turn to ash, and be unable to save anything at all.</p><p>AU where Regina doesn’t overhear Snow and Charming’s conversation at the docks in 2x20, and is left with an impossible choice: to follow them back to the Enchanted Forest, remaining eternally in Rumple’s cell, or to stay in Storybrooke. Alone.</p><p>(Non-romantic RumplexRegina)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the whole world is watching (as you fall)

**Author's Note:**

> it's 2am so sorry for any mistakes and come hop on this hell train with me

_“If we’re going back to the Enchanted Forest, are we really going to leave Regina behind?”_

_“She’s too dangerous to bring with us.”_

_…_

_“What do we do?”_

_“Instead of a second chance, we give her a choice. Come back, live out her days in Rumple’s cell. Or stay here.”_

_…_

They call a meeting the very next day.

Snow stands at the podium: hands clasped together atop the wood, David by her side. Her expression is patient as citizens file in, an array of questioning glances and anxious whispers. Belle gives her a small wave, and she can barely find it within herself to respond, quickly lifting a hand.

She turns - just an inch - towards David, eyes skimming the floor. "I'm not sure I can do this," she whispers, so quietly that he struggles to hear.

"You can," he promises. "We will." His hands fidget nervously with the opening of his jacket.

Regina is the last to enter. She skulks in silently, hands in her pockets, refusing to move from her spot at the back of the hall. A few faces turn to look at her, cruel and accusatory, but she simply crosses her arms and sighs, as though turning up is the greatest chore of all.

"Regina?" Snow says, and if she's completely honest with herself, she truly is surprised that Regina even bothered to show; the guilty twang in her chest only seems to expand. "Can you sit down here? Closer to the front, please?"

There's a low rumble amongst the citizens, but Snow chooses to ignore it, denies them their chance to distance Regina even more. They eventually fall into an awaiting silence, as Regina raises her chin, eyebrows furrowed, and says, "Why?"

"Please," Snow repeats, and disgust twists in Regina's gut.

She accedes, walking towards the front with all of the grace and regality of her former self. But she is not her anymore.

Her eyes scan the chairs and benches, looking for an escape, and just when she thinks she's found one - a seat in the far corner, right by the window - Snow says, "Over there. Next to Ruby."

Regina breathes in deeply, follows the line of her finger. Ruby's sitting at the front, facing the rest of the town, at a table not dissimilar to an extended witness box. Regina raises an eyebrow, bites the bottom of her lip to keep herself from snapping, and moves to sit beside her.

Ruby shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. She swallows and then speaks cautiously. "Do you know why we're here?" She pauses, gaining courage, and then: "I assume this isn't something you’ve done." The bitterness and malice is clear in her voice, and Regina continues to stare at the table.

"I don't," she says, bluntly, no longer bothering to attest her own innocence. The town will believe what they will, regardless of how much she insists.

Ruby mumbles something incoherent, and then David's clearing his throat, drawing everyone's attention to the podium. "We'd like to thank you all for coming here today at such short notice. We know you're busy, but we think you'll be glad to hear this news."

Then he steps back again, letting Snow take centre stage. Regina rolls her eyes- if only to hide the discomfort she feels.

"Well," Snow breathes, "it certainly feels a little odd to be standing up here in front of you all again. This meeting is mainly to address the fact that... we've found a way home." A clamour instantly picks up. There's a mixture of fear and joy, confusion and bliss. "We've been growing magic beans, hidden by a spell. We can go back."

"And what about _her_?" Leroy barks, face twisted into a snarl. His finger points viciously in Regina's direction.

Snow doesn't flinch as she says, "She stays." There's a low murmur in the room, nobody wanting to actively support the notion - not with Regina sitting right there - but nobody forming an argument against it either.

"What?" Regina says, lips parting. Her eyes flit across the room, searching for Henry; she exhales sharply upon realising that he isn't here, that they'd planned this all along.

"She stays, or she comes with us, but she will never leave the palace dungeons again."

Regina freezes ever so slightly, as though her limbs are made of lead and glass - as though to move would be to shatter - and then she smiles, and the whole room seems to pause in fear. "And just how do you think you'll do that?" she says.

Snow raises her head defiantly, voice laced with pity; it makes Regina sick. "You'll be held in Rumplestiltskin’s cell. Indefinitely." She almost wants to laugh. To laugh until her throat is hoarse and her eyes stream and everything inside of her has been coughed up and exhaled out. But instead, she runs her tongue over her teeth and asks, "And what of Henry?"

"You’ll never see him again." The words slice into Regina like a poisoned blade, infecting her rationality, burning through her reason. She leans forward, locks her fingers beneath her chin, expression light and unwavering.

Despite how tightly she grips the podium, Snow can't hide the way her hand shakes. "We didn't want this, Regina."

"And yet, here we are."

Stepping forward, one arm lingering around Snow's waist, David jabs a finger in Regina’s direction - to which she raises one perfect eyebrow, decidedly unfazed - and says, "You did this to yourself."

It earns him some cheers and mutterings of agreement from the crowd. Regina doesn't bother to correct him, to point out that it was him who had wrongly accused her, signing away any claim she still had to Henry, or that it was Snow who had been the root cause of her mother’s death.

She doesn't correct him, and she doesn't care.

Leroy jumps up, emitting anger in waves. "I say we kill her now. Why wait?"

"That is _not_ how we do things," Snow says, seemingly appalled, as though leaving her to die is somehow kinder, a nobler act.

"Well maybe it should be," Leroy grunts, and the other dwarves nod, staring at Regina with unkempt loathing.

She grits her teeth so hard that she thinks they may break. "How about I kill _you_ right now," she snarls.

They seem to shrink back, growing smaller beneath her stare, as though she's no more than a rabid animal, a dog bearing its teeth.

"This is unsafe." Ruby's voice echoes from beside her as she stands tall, refusing to flinch when Regina leans back, face composed once again, and stares at her with such cruel curiosity that she seems something more than human. "She could do anything to us."

"You’re right," David says, hands raised in an attempt to regain control, "but she hasn't."

Regina flits her gaze to him, eyebrows drawn into a frown, before biting the inside of her lip and staring at the table, jaw tight. She could end this anytime she wanted. She could burn the flesh from their bones and silence their voices. She could take Henry and run far away, seek refuge in the land that they’d left.

She could do all of these things as easily as drawing her next breath.

Subconsciously, her fingers twitch, and her mind is decided; but when she clenches her fist and focuses on calling all of the magic she holds to the surface, nothing happens.

She hears a laugh from the crowd, and although she cannot see his face, she'd recognise that shrill, haunting sound in any land, no matter how distant or changed.

"It seems someone's trying to have a little fun," Rumple says, standing from his seat, all traces of the impish laugh far gone, having vanished in the space of three seconds.

Regina narrows her eyes and bites the inside of her lip, rage building up inside of her, layer by layer. "What have you done?" she says, and Snow looks between the two of them before closing her eyes.

"It was just a precaution," she says. "One I thought would never need to be used." When she looks at Regina again, her stare has hardened and her voice is taut. "Clearly, I was wrong."

Regina smiles bitterly, exhaling a short breath of both amusement and disbelief. She swallows past the thickness in her throat - the vulnerability - and somewhere deep within the pit of her stomach, she feels... fear.

But she's never been very good at expressing such things, and so instead she turns her focus to Rumple. "I would've thought you were done being their weapon.”

"Oh, dearie, isn't that a little ironic, considering how long you've been mine?"

Humiliation hits her hard. She puffs out a breath of anger and stares at the crowd, squaring her shoulders. "Well, then," she mumbles. "I suppose we've reached a bit of an impasse." Snow watches her expectantly, as though she's missing something, and Regina runs her mind through her actions.

"There's no... Regina, there's no impasse." Her eyes are almost pleading. "The decision's yours. You stay, or you don't."

She can't believe that after everything, after all they've been through, this is what it comes down to. Begrudgingly, she realises that she has to hand it to the girl - she's being a lot kinder than Regina would ever be capable of herself - but the fury and the anger and the rage that she doesn't quite know how to deal with is still there. And it burns her up inside.

To stay would be to succumb to their wishes, to live a life completely alone - she supposes there's something ironic in being forced to remain in the world that she created - but to leave would be to lose even her facade of dignity, to see no one but remnants of people she once knew, and shadows against the walls.

She loses Henry either way.

She fears she's already lost herself.

Exhaling, she does the only thing she can. She tilts her head, expression placid, and says, "Is there really a choice?"

As if to challenge her further, David steps around the podium, moving to block her view. "So what is your answer?" he says, not unkindly.

She considers just how long it would take to reach over and strangle the air from his lungs. When she next speaks, it's through grit teeth, as though it takes all she has to push her pride away for one single moment. "I'm coming," she says, and she cringes at how defeated it sounds.

She hears Rumple laugh one final, godforsaken time, but when she looks at the man, his face is as neutral as it's ever been.

…

Regina’s allowed to pack a small suitcase, under Gold’s supervision, and as she throws in various keepsakes from Henry’s childhood – a handprint embedded in clay, a colourful drawing of the two of them – her hands twitch.

Gold rests against the doorframe, eyes following her as she bustles about the room. She folds one of Henry’s shirts and places it down gently, before spinning to face him, eyebrows drawn into a scowl. “Why are you letting this happen?”

His expression doesn’t change. He continues to stare at her. “This isn’t an attack on you.”

“Really?” Her voice is sharp, cutting. “Your little act earlier certainly made it seem that way.”

“It’s all a show, dearie. Everyone here is no more than an actor on a stage.” He smiles wryly. “A character in a fairytale.”

She huffs and turns back, busying herself with packing Henry’s old books and toys. Gold’s voice comes softly from behind her. “None of that will be necessary.”

“Oh, it will be,” she says, nodding to herself. “If you think that I’ll give up, retreat to your dungeon like some _criminal_ without so much as a fight, then you are more than just wrong: you’re stupid.” He doesn’t reply and so she continues, throat burning. “They may think you’re on their side, but I know you, Gold. I know that you’re planning something more.”

“Perhaps I am,” he says, so nonchalantly that she wants nothing more than to rip his heart from his chest.

She stills her hands, meets his gaze directly. “Please,” she whispers, and her soul is practically his for the taking.

With a shake of his head, he runs his tongue along his teeth. “I can’t.”

At that, a sardonic grin stretches across her face: knife-like and full of betrayal. Her voice remains low as she snarls, “You could do whatever you wished, you son of a bitch.”

And then she doesn’t speak to him, and he doesn’t speak to her, until Regina’s walking out of the house in front of him, and hears from behind: “I never wanted this for you.”

She doesn’t stop to look back.

…

They’re standing by the portal. It glimmers and contorts and twists into various shapes, dark and never-ending. It spirals and whips up a light breeze, beckoning them into its clasp.

Snow, David, and the rest of the town are crowded around like a flock of birds, staring into the chasm. Even Emma and Henry are standing beside them. Every now and again, Henry will flick his gaze in Regina’s direction, as though debating whether to say something, and she’ll smile as though nothing as wrong, as though the way that he looks at her now doesn’t remind her of days insisting that _t_ _he Evil Queen isn’t real. It’s a fantasy, Henry. I’m not her I’m not her I’m not her._

She pulls her coat tighter to her body, shifts her gaze to the ground as Emma finally meets her eyes. She seems to run through something in her head, feet shifting nervously. And then she’s turning to Henry, ruffling a hand in his hair, and making her way over.

“No,” Regina says, once Emma’s close enough to hear.

She stops in her tracks, hands in her pockets and a frown on her face. “What?”

“You don’t get to come over here. You don’t get to discuss this with me.” Regina tries her hardest to stop her bottom lip from trembling. “Not while you keep me away from my son.”

“I wasn’t there when the decision was made—” Regina opens her mouth as if to speak, but Emma continues on, steadfastly, “—but maybe we can change this. You can let me help you, get them to change their minds. Shit, Regina, you really know how to make people hate you.”

"I don't need your help." Regina laughs then, bitter and harsh. “And you, Miss Swan, really know how to interfere in business that isn’t yours.”

“He’s my son,” Emma says, but there’s no fight in her words. It’s spoken like an indisputable fact.

“Then go back and look after him. See if you can make up for the ten years that you missed.”

Emma recoils as though she’s been struck. She looks at Regina one final time – there’s something akin to remorse in her face, and Regina wonders whether this conversation could have had a different end – before turning.

Gold sidles up beside her, crosses his arms and breathes out deeply. “You make everything worse for yourself,” he says.

She doesn’t respond.

…

When they’re flung through the portal, arriving on the other side with blurred vision and clouded minds, the first thing Regina notices is a hand reaching to grab her wrist. She’s yanked to her feet by David, and she can’t help but release a low chuckle—one not unlike the day that she’d avoided execution.

She feels as though she’s gone mad, wonders whether reality left her years ago.

“The great prince,” she says, “frightened of someone both weaponless and without magic.”

“It doesn’t take magic to run,” he says, and she just continues to smile, refuses to let it drop until his eyes are averted.

He drags her all the way back to the palace, not once letting go. She realises just how much they fear her, and is disgraced by what little pleasure that brings. She should be revelling in their terror, proud of the horrors that they’re convinced she can commit—of the horrors that she _has_ committed. But instead, a grave despair settles in her stomach and gnaws through her bones, as though madness declares a price to be paid, and she is the feast it has chosen.

Once they reach the dungeons, the small part of her that had hoped for their minds to be changed, for them to feel guilt at leaving her down here to rot, fades away. The keys rattle against David’s belt, their chimes a song of defeat. The air feels damp and suffocating.

Regina tries to pull her arm away from David’s grip, struggles against his hold. “Let me go,” she says, and her foot collides with his shin.

As his hand uncoils for just a moment, she starts to move, backing away from him as fast as she can. She turns, not unwilling to run, but comes face-to-face with one of his royal guards. She savours the last remnant of dignity that she has, and she doesn’t run anymore.

“You’re really going to do this?” she hisses, flinching as he pushes her by the shoulder, leading her into the cell. “What happened to being a hero? What happened to mercy and kindness and-”

“You happened,” he says, and his voice doesn’t falter.

He shoves her away from him one final time—not with malice, but purely to allow him to jump back, slamming the gate closed with a piercing clang. The cell feels small, confined. On the walls, there are scratches and words in languages she doesn’t know. She slithers up to the bars, clutches them so tight that her knuckles turn white. “And where’s your _precious_ Snow White?” she says. “Surely she should be here to see her victory?”

He looks at her so pityingly, so sorrowful, that again, she feels as though she’s missed a step in their conversation. “This is far from a victory.”

Her face falls and her snarl drops and she backs away from the bars as though lightning streams through the metal. She watches as he closes his eyes momentarily, before turning and walking back up the steps, into the palace where his people await.

She moves further into the darkness, hidden amongst the shadows, and for the next hour, she tries every spell that she knows. Her magic isn’t suppressed, isn’t lurking deep within; instead, it’s as though it was never there at all.

She’s never felt so empty, so utterly and truly alone. Without Henry, the only comfort that remained was the warmth of magic at her core. Now, even that is gone.

Now, she has nothing.

With a slight whimper, she slides down the wall, and covering her head with her arms, she weeps.

…

She doesn’t receive any visitors. Twice a day, a guard will silently slide a meal under the gate, and although it’s not a lot, she can never quite manage to eat it all. Her chest aches for her son and the life that she’d once had. She curses Emma a thousand times for breaking her spell; she curses Rumplestiltskin for making her the monster that she’d become; she curses Snow White for Daniel’s death, and she curses her mother for crushing the heart; but most of all, she curses herself.

For she has never quite been strong enough to win.

One day – and she can’t quite determine when this day arrives, how long she’s been there – Rumplestiltskin turns up at the bars. He studies her intently, watching as she fiddles with one of Henry’s shirts, pressing the article of clothing to her face, inhaling his scent. He watches as tears stain the fabric and the Evil Queen that he’d raised crumbles to dust.

The minute her eyes meet his, she sniffs and puts the shirt down beside her, running a tired hand down her face. She pushes herself to her feet, knees weak and limbs stiff. “What are you doing here?” she drawls.

He takes a moment to respond. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she spits, and his forehead creases.

“You think everyone is out to get you, Regina.” He looks down at the tray by her feet, still full to the brim with soup. “They’re not.”

“Sit behind these bars for a few months and see if you still feel the same,” she says, and he finally has the decency to drop his gaze. She closes her eyes and her voice is breathless as she whispers, “ _Just go._ ”

And he does.

…

The days begin to blur. No sunlight reaches the cavern, and so when Snow White walks down the steps one day, hair long and stomach large, Regina fights the urge to shy away from the torchlight.

The girl approaches the cell tentatively, cautiously, as though Regina’s been lying all along and magic still runs through her veins. One glance at Regina is all it takes for a single tear to slip from her eye, trickling down her cheek like rain. She closes her eyes and breathes, “I am so sorry.”

Regina looks up through heavy lids, face sallow and pale. She tilts her head back, ignoring the pain in her neck.

And smiles.

“Snow White,” she says, and the words feel foreign on her tongue.

The girl opens her eyes, so full of pain and misery, as though she’s tormented herself over this for weeks and months. Perhaps even years. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been down here, that I haven’t seen you once, that I—”

“It’s okay,” Regina says, and in an odd way, she kind of means it.

“It’s not. It’s far from okay. It’s—it’s despicable and cruel and… and I couldn’t bear to see you this way.” She swallows, moves closer to the bars. “I thought that if I… if I pretended you weren’t here, I could learn to forgive myself.”

Regina licks at her lips, dry and chapped. “And how did that work out for you?”

“It didn’t,” Snow whispers, and her hand runs over her stomach, as though the child brings her comfort. Her eyes flit to the meal tray on the floor, the leftover piece of bread and half-eaten meat. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

Regina ignores the question. Pauses, then remarks, “Your husband removed everything from my cell.”

“You know why he did that.”

“So that I wouldn’t try to hurt myself.” Regina laughs, but the sound is barely audible.

Snow presses her face against the metal and says, “Only because you’d already tried.”

A silence settles between them, covering them like ash. “How is Henry?” Regina says, and her voice cracks slightly on his name.

“He’s good,” Snow says. “He’s… great, actually. He enjoys his lessons with David, and his tutoring with Belle. He’s got friends, supporters. He’s never been-” She stops herself quickly, but it’s already too late.

_He’s never been happier._

Regina bites down the sobs that ache to rattle through her body, spill over her lips. “Does he- does he ever ask about me?”

Tears fall freely from Snow’s eyes. “He used to,” she says, and Regina can almost _hear_ her own heart break.

“How old is he now?” she whispers, and Snow makes a strangled sound.

“Seventeen.”

Regina muses over this fact, imagines him in her mind: tall and handsome, kind and strong. She smiles, briefly, before standing and moving closer to Snow; the girl takes a step back instinctively. “Can we not end this now, Snow? Haven’t we both suffered enough?”

Snow frowns and her hands shake, as though she’d never believed that she’d hear those words, and for a moment, Regina thinks that this may be it. That she may be able to hold her son within her arms once more.

But then Snow sighs and looks back towards the steps. Her voice quivers as she says, “We’ve all moved on now, Regina. We’ve all… made something of our treacherous, terrible lives. We’ve found a way to be happy.”

Regina lets her body grow numb. “And there’s no place for me in that.”

“There could’ve been.”

“I see.”

Snow breathes in deeply, sobs into her palm for just a moment, but then she straightens her shoulders and whispers, “I can’t.” Her hand moves to her stomach. “I can’t risk anymore lives because of my… my care for you.”

“Then don’t,” Regina says, and coldness has covered her voice once more. “But I ask you one final thing.” Snow doesn’t move an inch, stays frozen to the spot. “Get me Rumplestiltskin.”

…

When he finally arrives, Regina breathes a sigh of relief, as though everything she’s ever done has led her to this moment.

He still looks the same as he did all those years ago, and something in her longs for that familiarity.

“You stopped coming,” she says, but it’s more of a statement than an accusation.

“I couldn’t look after you forever, Regina.”

She rests her head on the bars, welcomes the cool touch of the metal. “Please,” she whispers, and he seems to understand.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a small vial – as though he’d known this would be it, the day everything came to a close – and places it within her palm. She closes her fingers around it, pulls off the cork.

“Are you sure?” he says, and if she didn’t know him any better, if she hadn’t suffered at his hand for so long and so terribly, she’d think that there was actually something… sorrowful to his voice.

She brings the vial to her lips, and the liquid burns as it trickles down her throat, settling in her stomach like lead. She meets his stare one final time and says, “Let him forget me.”

He nods, and finally, _finally,_ she feels that she can rest.

Her knees buckle and she falls to the floor, dust to dust.


End file.
